


Echoes of Laughter, the Last Rising Voice

by Ailelie



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/F, post-Return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-19
Updated: 2010-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 06:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailelie/pseuds/Ailelie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of their return to Earth, Kate remembers Teyla.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes of Laughter, the Last Rising Voice

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-Return I. Thanks to Cinaed for the beta job. The lines of poetry throughout are from poems by Kate Northrop.

_"If only I had listened. I might have been here sooner," she will say. And Teyla will smile and press their foreheads together gently._

"You are here now," she'll say.

And that's all that will matter.

Kate wakes and breathes hard. The ceiling fan whirs overhead, but the ocean does not rumble outside her window. She cannot fall back to sleep.

/the ending, the slow opening/

  
Kate lays on a new blanket in her backyard. She bought the small house two weeks after their return from Pegasus in an attempt to force herself to adjust. Fireworks explode out-of-season down the street and Ally's head is heavy on her stomach. Ally is talking about --something, but Kate is stargazing. Libra. _Balance._ Cassiopeia. _The Queen._ Little Lyra. _Music._ Aiden's star does not shine in the east. Sumner's Chevron does not point toward the mainland. Kate has never felt so disoriented.

/and most of all, she is beyond reach, beautiful/

  
Lips on her neck, breast, wrist, sucking her pulse. Fingernails scratching across her breast, teasing her nipples and then circling her belly button, brushing low over over curls, and lower still. Teyla's hand splayed over her hip, warm and holding her tight and still, laughter, a gasp of breath, crescendo, a name. Kate wakes, damp and wanting and unfulfilled.

/and sons. They took the roads away. But first/

  
Kate remembers meeting Ally. She had been late to her office-- a power outage in her quarters had cut her alarm clock off-- and Ally Winters, one of the program's many engineers, was waiting in the outer office for another psychiatrist and her standard evaluation.

Kate had said hello and traded the normal pleasantries, barely registering Ally's contagious smile and dark eyes, and unlocked her office door, well, tried to unlock the door. Her key stuck. Again. Frustrated, late, and with an appointment in less than an hour, Kate had kicked the door, swearing to herself that one day she would leave this accursed mountain behind.

"Let me try," Ally had said and she approached the lock. She pulled out an old-style bobby pin from her hair-- "I've always wanted to do this," she'd confessed-- and broke it into two pins. Minutes later, the door opened.

"I owe you one."

Ally had grinned. "Lunch?" And Kate had said yes.

Ally had been an accident, a wonderful accident. Lunches became dinners became breakfasts. But then came Atlantis and Kate, the only psychiatrist Rodney McKay would deign to talk with, left. Ally had given her a vintage bobby pin as a parting gift-- just in case. They kissed good-bye, Kate promised to come back someday, and that was it.

But now, when Ally touches her, Kate imagines warmer skin, longer hair, different muscles, different shape. Guilt warms her belly and she wants so badly to confess, but then she remembers her first night back in her old quarters and Ally arriving with her favorite wine and a movie she hadn't seen 16 times and the words clog her throat.

/like a wave, only slower/

  
Sheppard slides into the seat across from Kate. She smiles, forces herself to smile.

"You aren't happy here," John says bluntly. "None of us are." He picks at his eggs. Everyone teases about how horrible Atlantis food must have been, but Kate misses it. Earth food is never so creative and the SGC does not have Lt. Tom Harrison, who grew up in a family of chefs and trained in the kitchen before rebelling to the marines, or Kenna, an Athosian woman with an encyclopedic mind for recipes and a skill in the kitchen rarely found outside four star restaurants, in their kitchens.

"We will adjust," Kate says, lies, and tries a bite of gravy-soaked biscuit. Everything still tastes so strange.

John scoffs. "I figure we're unsalvageable."

"I hope not." Kate sees Ally emerge from the food line and watches her as she sit across the room. All she can think is that Ally is moving wrong.

Kate finishes her juice and stands up. She can't eat anymore.

/not again, not your hands, your face/

  
Ally tries, but Kate feels nothing. She can't close her eyes and pretend anymore; too much is wrong. Ally pulls away and Kate sees that she is finally hearing all the things that Kate has not said. She does not ask questions, but instead kisses Kate slow and long (and good-bye) and then nestles down in bed and sleeps. When Kate awakens in the morning, Ally is already gone. For the first time in five weeks, Kate cries.

/in the wind? A return? Why, when already/

  
Kate is in her office when Ally stops by to share the news. John, Rodney, Elizabeth, and Carson had stolen a jumper; they were going to save Atlantis. Hope flushes through Kate's body and she wonders if John had ever hinted to her about their plans, if she could have tagged along.

Ally's eyes are sharp and searching and Kate does not hide her happiness. Ally half-smiles wistfully and says she wishes Kate would stay. This pulls Kate back to the moment.

"I can't," she says.

Ally looks down and nods. "I know that. I love you, Kate."

Kate blinks, startled. "I loved you, too," she says and _that_ makes all the difference.

Ally sighs. "I hope they win," she says.

"Me too." If Elizabeth and the rest come through, then the Ancients will not be able to exile them again.

/listened to the sounds of water, listened/

  
Someone from the expedition is always in or near the 'gate room on an unofficial rotation. Kate calls a realtor and puts her house up for sale. She begins to pack, certain that the news, when it finally comes, will be good.

And, at night in her increasingly bare house, Kate dreams. She dreams of laughter and the clap of sticks and stargazing new constellations, of incense and candles and sharing secrets, of Teyla's fingertips digging into her hip, her hair brushing across her shoulder and stomach, mouth crashing into mouth, fast silence, of Teyla's just-right body and just-right smile and just-right walk and just-right everything and--

Kate waits.


End file.
